Let's face it... creating muscle is not the easiest thing to accomplish even in spite of frequent hard workout routines and trying every form of workout and supplement.
I struggled for years to gain any meaningful muscle mass, but over the years in my personal training business and with my own experimentation have found some significant things that have helped produce meaningful muscle gains achievable even for hardgainers.
So, I'm going to give 3 important tricks here so you can start building lean muscle mass sooner and simpler.
1. Make sure that 95% of the exercises you perform regularly in the gym are large multi-joint compound workouts. It doesn't matter if your objective is fat loss or creating muscle... big multi-joint exercises should comprise 95% of the workouts you do in your exercises if you want to get lean, ripped, and strong.
It's best to think of it in terms of the main movement patterns such as these (focus 95% of your workouts on these):
* upper body horizontal press (bench press, pushups, dips),
* upper body horizontal rows (1-arm dumbbell rows, seated cable rows, bent over barbell rows),
* upper body vertical pull (lat pulldowns, pullups, chinups),
* upper body vertical press (overhead dumbbell and barbell presses, barbell or kettlebell clean & presses)
* lower body squatting movements (front squats, back squats, overhead squats, bodyweight squats, etc)
* lower body deadlifting movements (regular deadlifts, sumo deadlifts, Romanian deadlifts)
* lower body single leg movements (lunges, step-ups, jump lunges, etc)
* abdominal and core exercises (these are significant, but still are second priority after all of the main upper body and lower body multi-joint movements... your abs and core will be worked from most major multi-joint exercises anyway)
The other 5% of your workouts can concentrate on solo joint work outs (isolation exercises) such as bicep curls, tricep presses, calf presses, shoulder shrugs, shoulder lateral raises, pec flyes, etc, etc. Nonetheless, these exercises are only accessory exercises to do after the chief focus has been the multi-joint drills.
2. Train hard and intensely three to four days/week for forty five to sixty minutes per weight training workout. Keep your workouts to no longer than sixty minutes as training too much beyond this point might prompt surplus catabolism. You want to stay anabolic, but you still need to exercise your body hard and intensely enough to start muscle enlargement.
Try a super-set style of workout curriculum to capitalize on the intensity that you can train. My favorite mixtures are opposing upper and lower body movement patterns that don't interfere with each other, such as squats coupled with pullups as a superset, or bench press coupled with deadlifts as a superset.
Do not underestimate the effectiveness of these sorts of upper/lower body supersets done with heavy weights and a elevated intensity. The 1st time in my life that I experienced important muscle bulk gains were when I started doing these types of workout combos regularly (although still mixing up my training variables).
These are mainstays of practically any successful workout program -- caloric intake can simply be adjusted whether your goal is fat burning or gaining muscle mass.
3. Eat clean with quality whole foods... REAL foods in place of extremely processed over-hyped supplemental powders and bars.
The quality of protein (and additional nutrition from vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants) are best assimilated by the body from bona fide whole food like eggs, meats, dairy (preferably raw), fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, etc. instead of from refined protein powders, chemical-laden bars, and meal replacements.
Ignore the hyped up exercises in the muscle magazines that only work for professional bodybuilders or people on steroids. Forget about the over-hyped supplemental "stacks" that pay the bills for almost every muscle mag... Instead, make these tips in this article part of your lifestyle, and you will see muscle gains and a leaner, ripped body like you've never seen before!
If you want to get a lean chiseled body, find more free tips at The Best Stomach Workout.
